About me
I am the Co-Founder and CTO at a stealth startup that focuses on generative AI for speech.
Previously, I was the head of Google Cloud Speech from 2018 to 2022, and before that I was the Co-Founder and CEO at an AI startup which had a successful exit.
From 2006 to 2015, I was a research staff member at IBM Watson Research center, and I was one of the main inventors of the Watson question answering system that beat the best human contestants on Jeopardy!. The success of Watson question answering system kick started IBM's $1 billion investment in the Watson division.
In 2015, I taught a graduate class at Columbia University with Liangliang Cao on deep learning for computer vision and natural language processing. The class resulted in at least one publication at a top tier conference and one startup.
During my graduate studies, I was one of the main contributors to Project Halo question answering system that that passed the AP chemistry test. Project Halo was funded by Vulcan Inc, and eventually became part of Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
My research interests include:
- Question answering
- Natural language processing
- Deep learning
- Machine learning
- Artificial intelligence
Recent Updates
[4/2017] Gave a talk at the NYU Future Lab AI Summit
[08/2016] customersericeai.com now is rebranded as HelloVera
[12/2016] We joined the NYU AI Nexus program
[08/2016] customersericeai.com website is online!
[02/2016] Our paper Poker-CNN: A Pattern Learning Strategy for Making Draws and Bets in Poker Games is presented at AAAI 2016
[05/2015] Deep Learning for Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing class is over, and congratulations to the Deep Learning Idol Award winners!
